The Fuller Center Ride – Catchup

| June 20, 2022 | 0 Comments
At the conclusion of the ride, we dip our front tires into Lake Erie to symbolize the conclusion of the ride. I’m second from the left.

It’s been a month since the conclusion of the Fuller Center ride and I’ve been tormented by my commitment to do a conclusionary post. My tendency of procrastination is at its peak when it comes to writing. It is only the point at which the pain of guilt from resisting writing something I need to write exceeds the pain of actually writing that I finally succumb. So, here I am. I’m going to begin trying to catch up. The picture above is the end, but I’m going to pick up where I left off and see if I can establish some record of the ride for posterity.

Actually, I had planned an extensive project of retro-posting a day by day account of the ride. Yeah, right. That wasn’t going to happen. Instead, I will recount the highlights and lowlights in a single post so I can get this off my conscience. And I’m just going to write stream of consciousness and go wherever it takes me.

I left off on Day 2 in which the trailer needed repair. So, I’ll pick things up on Day 3.

DAY 3 – June 15th

Glendale to Louisville – 59.4 miles

It was a relatively short jaunt from Glendale to Louisville. Unfortunately, it was a day of flats for me. I got three. They were all slow leaks, so I didn’t realize my tire was going flat until one of other riders pointed it out to me. All lot of the riding that day was on the shoulder of busy 2 or 4 land roads with a good number of trucks. The flat was caused by a wire from a retread from one of the trucks. I pulled over in a clearing to fix it. It turned out to the site of a fatal accident that killed two people, Donald and Sheila Williams. As it happened, our stop was one day before the 38th anniversary of the accident, as you can see from the monument. Sorry about the bio break being taken by the rider in the background who helped me with the flat. Didn’t notice when I was taking the picture.

Donald and Sheila Williams, Died June 16th, 1984, May They Rest In Peace

We didn’t get the whole wire out, which caused two more flats before I finally fixed it permanently that evening. No more flats for the rest of the ride.

DAY 4 – June 16

Louisville – Build Day

Showers at the the Louisville Fire Department. Firefighters working out. A couple of riders took advantage of the cold plunge.

Day 5 – June 17th

Louisville to Warsaw

Today’s ride was 81 miles, so not nothing. We were challenged with a passing thunderstorm that required us to take cover at a gas station. The timing was pretty perfect in that this was our scheduled rest stop. The rain continued a bit even after the storm passed. So, we had to dig out our rain jackets from the trailer. But it did cool things down.

I took some heat over my jacket. Not the day-glo style designed for visibility

There was one big hill at the end before a nice down hill glide into Warsaw, a very nice resort town on the Ohio River.

Me and Ray Arriving in Warsaw

We had a nice dinner at a restaurant on the Ohio River.

Left to Right: Diane, John, Mark, Tim, me, Alex, Sandi

OK, I’m going to post this and continue posting updates subsequently.

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